I'm seeing more and more answers linking to memofy, instead of containing the answer directly. Is this spam? I have not created and do not want to create a memofy account, so all I ever see is the login screen.

@Jeff - Your link isn't working. I tried to fix it but it looks like there may be a bug in the link parsing.
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Brad MaceAug 19 '11 at 1:05

@bemace yeah it had to be FULLY escaped. I thought CTRL+L did that.. will check
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Jeff Atwood♦Aug 19 '11 at 1:34

I have not created and do not want to create a memofy account, so all I ever see is the login screen. +1 Very much agree with this. I've never even heard of memofy, but the general consensus is that all answers here should be self-contained.
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Cody GrayAug 19 '11 at 4:20

3 Answers
3

This answer consists of just a link to memofy. Answers containing just a link are strongly frowned upon in the first place (From “how to answer”: “Provide context for links”). Answers containing just a link to a private site are completely useless.

The proper response is to flag this as “not an answer”.

For answers that contain useful content in addition to the memofy link, a comment remarking that the memofy link is useless is in order. If the user doesn't respond, it would be reasonable to edit the link out, since it's noise.

Does the memofy link contain code or something? If so, it might be worth creating a shared account (bugmenot.com ?) and copying-and-pasting the information out of there and directly into the post before removing the link.
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Cody GrayAug 19 '11 at 4:21

@CodyGray I can't be bothered, but feel free to do it if you like. There's a difficulty with copying information from there: we'd typically not have the right to copy-paste (unless there's an explicit license on whatever is behind that link).
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GillesAug 19 '11 at 7:01

Oh really? I assumed it was being used as a code sharing site like pastebin or something. In that case, there should be no problem copying the code back into their answer. I guess not...
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Cody GrayAug 19 '11 at 7:23

1

@CodyGray Licensing is explicit. By default, only fair use is allowed, and that doesn't permit displaying the material in public.
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GillesAug 19 '11 at 7:32

2

Wow, yeah. Then I'm all for banning these altogether... (Yeah, I'm a radical.)
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Cody GrayAug 19 '11 at 7:59

I would say that also in this case it is valid what already said for answers containing just a link: They are not answers. An answer should contain a summary of what reported in the link, to allow those who are reading the answer to decide if they want to follow that link; the other reason the summary should be provided is that link rot happens, and an answer with just a link would not be anymore useful.

If you need to log in to the site for which the link has been provided, then that is a reason more to avoid those links; I don't want to log in another site to read an answer I could read on an SE site.